Falalalala,lalalala!

Cait’s boyfriend’s family is a case in point. They just got a little Bichon Frise. He’s cute as a button and the only problem he will face is potential love overload. They just got him, and I just got the first phone call of many on training questions.

Which means, of course, that it’s time for another primer on house-training.

Paris (AFP) – There is the riddle of the Bermuda Triangle. The unresolved identity of Jack the Ripper. The enigma of how the Universe developed beyond a quark-gluon soup following the Big Bang. And then there is the Sheepdog Mystery. A puzzle that has niggled mathematical minds for years, the Mystery is this: how does a single dog get so many selfish sheep to move so efficiently in the same direction? The answer, revealed on Tuesday in a journal published by Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, is that sheepdogs cleverly follow a simple rule book.

Researchers fitted highly accurate GPS tracking devices into backpacks that were then placed on a […]

You’re thinking those are funny looking slippers, I know. And you’re wondering what a pile of random shoes has to do with telling anything. In our house, this would tell you how many people have been here today.

And what do mismatched shoes strewn about have to do with people entering your home, you might muse. When Graidy gets excited, his natural inclination is to gently grab your hand and lead you into the kitchen. To curb that tendency, I’ve kept a pile of old socks by the back door so he can “put a sock in it” so to speak. (Those have long since disappeared to who knows where.) Actually, what I […]

I recently had a conversation with another dog-loving friend about dog training, and what we would consider the essential must-have-down-cold training commands. While both of us have what others would consider to be highly trained dogs, the only remedial training I absolutely always stay on top of comes down to three commands.

That’s because, in a nutshell, these commands embody what I feel are necessary for my dogs (and the people around my dogs) to remain safe.

My 3 non-negotiable training commands:

Come — as in run to me right this very minute.

Stay— as in stop dead in your tracks no matter what you’re doing and don’t move another muscle until IÂ release you.

Graidy and I are in the car riding to nowhere. As we breeze down the road, I think about how it was we got here.

Anyone who’s had a rescue dog before knows to expect that there may be little quirks that show up here and there. Graidy is no exception. Graidy’s early life was a difficult one. He was found as a starving street stray in a New Jersey city. Even though all’s been well since he’s come to live with us, there are still remnants of his past that will always affect him.

One of the major issues is that he doesn’t want to leave our property. He doesn’t want to be taken for walks. He doesn’t want to go […]